Victoria ranked third-best city in Canada to be a woman

Victoria is ranked as the third-best place to be a woman in Canada in 2019.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives took into account employment statistics, wages, political involvement, education, violent crime and health to determine its rankings.

Kingston, ON and St. John’s, NL took the top two spots, but Victoria got third for its ranking in health and female leadership.

In 2017, over 75 percent of working age women held jobs in Victoria, the third-highest level in Canada among large cities. However, there was a disparity in a boost in employment ratings between 2013-2017, which saw a 3.7 percentage point increase for women and 6.7 percentage points for men.

In part time work, Victoria has a fairly narrow employment game, ranking eighth. However, full-time employment is much larger, with 70 per cent of working women holding full-time jobs compared to 85.5 per cent for men.

The average income for women bring home $29,340, approximately 73.9 per cent of what men earned in the same year (2016).

Women living in poverty sat around 14.9 per cent, compared to 13.7 per cent in men.

As far as education, working-age women with a post-secondary education sat at 41.1 per cent in 2017, compared to 33.1 per cent for men.

Men are three times more likely to have an education in trades programs and apprenticeships, while only one in 10 graduates who are women hold a degree in a STEM field, compared to one in four men.

Victoria holds a top spot as far as women in leadership; women currently make up 43 per cent of elected officials, well above the national average of 34 per cent. Overall, Victoria ranks second on female representation in municipal leadership due to five out of nine city council seats belonging to women, including Mayor Lisa Helps, Coun. Marianne Alto, Coun. Laurel Collins, Coun. Charlayne Thornton-Joe, and Coun. Sarah Potts.

This doesn’t translate to management roles, where women only make up 38 per cent.

Life expectancy for women is 85, above the national average of 81.

As far as personal security, Victoria ranked 17th as a safe place for women to live in Canada. A majority of victims facing intimate partner violence (77 per cent) were women, while the rate of police-reported sexual assaults in Victoria was 13 per cent on average between 2010-2014, compared to a 19 per cent national average.